muru-D and how to use anchoring bias in a pitch

In the next three minutes you can learn two valuable things:

• What an Entrepreneur-in-Residence does to help founders in a startup accelerator program; and
• How to use ‘anchoring’ (a kind of cognitive bias) to increase the impact of your storytelling and pitching.

To learn what an entrepreneur-in-residence does, you’ll have to watch this short video. To learn how to use anchoring, watch the short video first, and then read on for the explanation.

Telstra’s muru-D accelerator asked me to get the Showcase-D demo day crowd excited about the ten startup pitches they were about to see. Not an easy task: what could I say that wouldn’t be a spoiler for the founders themselves? How could I say something exciting about all of them in aggregate without saying anything specific about any individual company? Also, I’m a great pitch coach, but that doesn’t mean I’m always great at pitching!

Could I land a joke?

Showcase-D was held in August 2019, and one of the biggest news items in recent weeks had been the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. One day I was talking with the founders in the cohort about how I’d seen the landings…